Commentary by Stephen Macaulay

If frantic, unfocused activity is the name of the game in terms of running the United States, then the Trump Administration is superb in its execution of, well, everything that it is doing.

Not that I am suggesting that this is all good — and I must admit it is difficult to find much goodness in what it is doing (no, I am not saying that this is necessarily evil, just bad for the citizens of the country in many cases).

But there is continual, frantic activity such that things that are being done aren’t questioned because suddenly there is something else occurring that is even more bizarre. When, for example, has a president ever called for the firing of the CEO of a public company?

Or doesn’t it seem strange that there seems to be an inability to keep people in important positions:

Marco Rubio, for example, who has a big job as Secretary of State, was also named acting National Security Advisor. Scott Bessent, Secretary of Treasury, has been named acting head of the IRS. Sean Duffy, Transportation Secretary, is also interim NASA director. (Well, one might argue that NASA is transportation-adjacent.)*

Every one of these jobs is a big one, so somehow this inability to get people in positions and keep them there is an indication that there is no handle on human resources. If this was a company, the head of HR would be long gone. But in these

cases, there are too many distractions to pay attention to the fundamentals like

having someone in charge of internal revenues (tax cuts or not, the government still

needs to collect income, and it isn’t all based of tariffs).

Another problem takes the form of the multitudinous cuts that were made to government programs by various unappointed people (the minions at DOGE) and appointed people (the Secretary of Health and Human Services). In the first case, it is the addressing of alleged “waste, fraud and abuse,” which is often stated but rarely proven. In the latter case, it is predicated on an ideology that doesn’t use evidence as a basis as much as belief — which works for religion, but not science.

The severe impacts that these undertakings have are far more consequential than might be imagined.

In an interview with Paul Krugman, Helene Rey, a professor of economics at the London Business School, said: 

“I think the constant attacks on institutions of the United States, which are undermining the credibility of the currency, are actually very serious. So tariffs are one thing, okay, and that's a non-trivial issue. There's a lot of uncertainty, et cetera. But the constant attack of this administration on the traditional institutions underpinning US long-term growth and US strength in innovation, in technology, such as the attack on universities, but also on the financial side — the attack on the Federal Reserve. All this, I think, is extremely serious and I think is really leading to a reassessment in the rest of the world of the dollar as a currency that one can fully trust.”

The fact that US universities have given rise to some of the most amazing technologies that are commercialized and invested in is something that isn’t helped when the Trump administration freezes some $2.2 billion to Harvard. 

Other countries invest in the US because it is expected that there will be innovation that will lead to growth; Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s cancellation of half-a-billion dollars in federal funding for mRNA research is exactly the opposite of that (to say nothing of the potential negative health implications because a guy who has NO background in medicine or science doesn’t like the tech).

Eliminating support for electric vehicles — both in terms of tax credits for the purchase of the vehicles and the spending to build out infrastructure — means that the US vehicle manufacturers are now more interested in building internal combustion engine-powered vehicles because they can make more money on them — while Chinese and European vehicle companies innovate. The US becomes a smog-covered island in terms of its auto industry.

The US dollar is a reserve currency, meaning that it is held by and used by other countries for trade, which positively redounds to the US. By using dollars, the dollars become more valuable. While it says “In God We Trust” on the dollar, by being the main global reserve currency central banks around the world are saying, in effect, “In the US We Trust.”

But, Rey suggests, the US is losing its credibility around the world.

If another currency — the euro, the yuan — becomes the reserve, then the US has a problem.

This doesn’t make America great, it makes it an outlier.

But something else is going to happen to distract us from what is seemingly inevitable if the country continues to be run by unserious people.

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*One of the things to think about regarding many of the appointments: These people are comprehensively unqualified for their positions so they are immediately over their heads. Were someone staffing a business they would do a better job of selecting from the resumes than the Trump Administration has done.

Macaulay is pundit-at-large for The Hustings.